SRI LANKA HOLIDAYS: The Giant’s Reservoir

From Anuradhapura, I returned to the west coast, following the line of the River Malwatu-Oya, the ancient Kadamba, which flows into the Gulf of Mannar, north of Aripo. Within a few miles of the coast our party passed, at Taikum, the immense causeway of cut granite, two hundred & fifty yards in length, & upwards of fifteen feet high, by which it was attempted to divert the waters of the river into the canal, that was designed to supply the Giants’ Tank. None of the great reservoirs of Ceylon have attracted so much attention as this stupendous work. The retaining bund of the reservoir, which is three hundred feet broad at the base, can be traced for more than fifteen miles, & as the country is level, the areas which its waters were intended to cover would have been nearly equal to that of the lake of Geneva. At the present day the bed of the tank is the site of ten populous villages, & of eight which are now deserted. Its restoration was successively an object of solicitude to the Dutch & British Governments, & surveys were ordered at various times to determine the expediency of reconstructing it. Its history has always been a subject of unsatisfied inquiry, as the national chronicles contain no record of its founder. A recent discovery has, however, served to damp alike historical & utilitarian speculation; for it has been ascertained that, owing to an error in the original levels, the canal from the river, instead of feeding the tank, returned its unavailing waters to the channel of Malwatu river.

Above is an excerpt from the work, Ceylon, An Account of the Island by James Emerson Tennent, London, Great Britain, 1859.

Correction to the reference on The Giant’s Tank

Quote Dr. Ananda Guruge

Many a modern engineer has been baffled by the sophisticated designs on which these reservoirs and channel systems were constructed. It is known that the Dutch engineers of the eighteenth century and their British counterparts in the nineteenth failed to understand the design of the giant tank near Mannar on the northwestern coast. Only in recent years, when the tank was restored in conformity with the original design, was it found that levelling by the unknown engineer of the past was vastly superior to that attempted by modern engineers.

Unquote Unesco Courier, Jan 1985: Dr. Ananda Guruge